Costa Rica: The Places

A huge thanks to Sophie, Eleah, Marie and Miriam for keeping the place warm for me with their guest posts, I hope you enjoyed them too! I’m back from my amazing vacation to Costa Rica–I’d love to say it’s great to be home, but I’m already ready to go back! There was no way to lump my vacation into one post, so I’m breaking it down into a few. The first? The highlights of the places I saw!

This may be something of a photo dump, but I took 600+ pictures, so consider yourselves lucky that I’m limiting myself…

La Fortuna

La Fortuna is located at the base of the stunning Arenal Volcano. The town is small, and the place is surrounded by beautiful outdoor sights and activities.

Our hotel room had a beautiful view of the town–although they charged an extra $5 if you wanted air conditioning. We sweated it out. In the name of the environment. Or in the name of just being cheap. We got to ride out a little bit of an earthquake our first night there, but the volcano stayed inactive.

A trip to the Arenal waterfall was a great opportunity for swimming, hiking and seeing a beautiful waterfall in the middle of the jungle.

The Arenal volcano. And a horse.

The next journey began with a trip across Lake Arenal.

Monteverde

Monteverde is located in the mountains of Costa Rica. The place is cool (temperature), insanely windy and home to spectacular mountain views and forests.

The ride up the mountains involved some rough bus riding.

My best friend being adorable at our amazing hotel room (the place was surrounded by gardens–sort of reflected in the windows).

The amazingly beautiful Santa Elena Cloud Rainforest.

Quepos/Manuel Antonio

This is a highly touristy area thanks to pristine public and private beaches. The town of Quepos has your standard tourist shops, Americanized restaurants and somewhat sketchy dance clubs. Manuel Antonio has a nice public beach, while the Manuel Antonio National Park has stunning private waters.

The drive there. Fields of African oil palms.

Oh, just chillin’ on our hotel patio.

Running on the “public” Manuel Antonio beach.

The private Manuel Antonio National Park beach.

So now that you have an idea of where I was, stay tuned for the food and the fun of Costa Rica, coming soon!